The echo of a wrecked soul
by RoseScor90
Summary: On Cedric's last night at Hogwarts, on earth, he finds out things that he never thought he would if he lived to be a thousand. And the queerest of them all was Pansy Parkinson! R&R! Rated T for paranoia!


Disclaimer: Not JK…

A/n: Written for the Try something new…for the boldest of writers challenge. The pairing was Cedric/Pansy. The prompts were "You lied to me" and laughter.

He was tired. Tired of all the smiling faces around him. Of all the people around him who wished him well. All the people around him who acted as if they cared a knut if he were burned to ashes by a dragon or not. People were selfish and he'd feel much better if they acted so. He had had enough with the masks. He was tired of all the simplicity of these lies.

And so he sought out. He sought out complexity. Something he couldn't understand. Someone who wasn't the same as the rest. Someone who wouldn't endure every difficulty in life for the 'greater good'. He sought out the truth.

Ironically, it was the day before his last when he met her. He had known about her for long. Pansy Parkinson was not someone who preferred to stay in the shadows. Good or bad, she was always in the limelight.

She had been returning to her commonroom when she happened to meet him. She did not try to hide her displeasure in his presence. It was something new to him. Something that intrigued him.

"Diggory. Move out of my way, will you? Remove yourself from my sight before you tarnish it permanently" she said casually before strolling, no, strutting, away to the entrance of the castle. He knew she was sneaking out of the castle. He followed her, his curiosity pushing him. He really shouldn't have. What if she was going to some kind of Death Eaters in training meeting? Cedric shook his head. He was being paranoid. But he did hesitate when she went straight into the forest. But it was apparent she was alone so he followed her into the darkness.

Outside the forest, he had been able to spot her with the moon shining above them. Inside the forest all was dark and he often lost sight of her entirely. He'd just decide to leave the stupid mission and then he'd see her again. Even then, he could only spot her frame, willowy and gracious even on forest ground. She seemed to be in no hurry to go wherever she was going. It was when his vision began to brighten that he saw where she had been leading.

For over a few decades, the fairy lake had been the stuff people dreamed about. Many Hogwarts students had tried to find it and was one of the reasons the forbidden forest was forbidden. Cedric had not expected to find it now, of all times. Of course he had thought of going to find it himself, but he had been too rule abiding to so anything more than imagining.

She looked back suddenly, and he was too lost in thought to hide quickly. She'd have noticed that movement anyway. If he had expected a shower of dark spells and a slow painful death in the middle of nowhere, he was sorely disappointed. She looked past him as if he wasn't there at all. She turned back and began her slow walk once again.

Cedric stood rooted to the place. Did he follow her, knowing she could turn on him at any instant? Or did he turn back and head to the castle like the good boy he was? There never really had been any other option.

"So, do you come here often?" he asked as she sat on the shore of the lake. The pearly florescence from the heart of the lake shed its glow on her, making her seem like the fairy the lake was named after. He stared at the lake, trying to find the cause of the light from within. It seemed that the radiance did not have any source. It just spread over the entire lake, and reflected off anything around it, splashing it with a mysterious, bright flush. And she, sitting on the shore on a piece of rock, seemed like the epitome of the portrait he had somehow stumbled upon. But the fairy in the portrait seemed completely unaffected by it.

"Yes. As often as I can without raising suspicion. I have friends here. People I like. People I love" saying so, she began to laugh softly. Cedric was stumped as to the reason why she was behaving such. The laughter disappeared as soon as it had appeared and she began whimpering and then hid her face in her hands as she sobbed heart wrenchingly, her whole figure shuddering from the effort. The crying lasted for a bit more than the insane laughter and Cedric couldn't decide which scared him the most. She then stared deeply into the lake, and her lips moved soundlessly. A soulful voice reached his ears and it was moment before he comprehended that she was singing. A few seconds later, he was sure he heard the faded echo of an answering hum from around him. It seemed to come at him from all directions and made his hairs stand on end. For all the fear it gave him, he couldn't ignore that it was the most beautiful and moving tone he had ever heard. It was immeasurably deep and sorrowful. Like a phoenix's lament. Tears sprung to his eyes without warning and he placed his hand under his eye in surprise.

"Touching isn't it?" was all the response he got from her. He was very afraid now. He knew now that the fabled creature before him was not real, it could cause him no harm. But he was afraid for it. Because, beneath all the beauty lay a timeless anguish.

"Pansy…" he reached an arm towards her, though he was a good few yards away from her. He put his hand down immediately. It seemed a useless gesture, somehow. She laughed at that, not the maniacal laughter from before, but the melodic tinkling of a bell.

"Not Parkinson anymore? You don't feel like calling me that here, do you? Everything feel surreal in this clearing, am I right? And you think I'm some sort of fairy in disguise" she said calmly, signaling for him to come sit beside her. He moved slowly, afraid of tainting the chaste picture before him. She smiled unaffectedly at him, as if this was the most natural occasion in the world.

"What was that song from before?" he asked carefully, not wanting a repeat of the emotional turmoil from before.

"That…it's called the soul's echo. Each of our souls has an aura. You see the flame from within the lake? Yes, it is a flame. It resonates the aura of your soul. What you heard a few minutes before was mine. Pathetic, isn't it? The vain, conceited and stuck up Pansy Parkinson; the queen of Slytherin; the embodiment of cruelty and heartlessness has the world's most frail aura. The most easily extinguished spirit. A soul shredded worse than bits of dust"

He did not know what to say. He had thought the sound must have been related to her somehow but, this was something that took some time to comprehend. She continued, unaware of his stumbling, "But it is here that I feel the strongest. Like nothing and noone can affect me. I've always wanted to show someone this place. Where I'm the safest. Where I'm the most harmless thing around. That was why I lured you here" she smiled apologetically at him, all her previous emotions bottled up behind the mask he could see plain as day now. Another doubt arose in his mind at her words and he looked around trying to see through the opaque shadows that surrounded them. She laughed again, seeing his dilemma and said, "Don't worry! Nothing will happen to you as long as you are here. This is a place the dwellers of the forest consider sacred. They won't harm its visitors"

"That's not what I'm bothered about. You said you lured me here? I thought you said you didn't want to even look at me?"

"And you believed the words of a Slytherin?"

"You lied to me!"

"Yes, I did. I said it knowing very well you would follow me only then. Do you think I'm this bad in stealth?"

"You wanted to show me this? Aren't you afraid I'd tell people?"

"You won't. Nobody would believe you anyway. You'll never come here again. Once you're out of here, you won't be able to find your way back in unless I show you"

"No one else knows about this?"

"There's only one way to find the lake of the fairies. You have to be completely severed from the world. Utterly devastated. So despaired by the world that you feel no attachment towards anything in it. That's when you feel the pull of the lake. I doubt many could so absolutely lose hope" she said calmly and it made him wonder. And question. If people could be so different on the inside, had he been wrong all along about those others too?

If Parkinson could be this wrecked, could Krum be the cruelest person on earth? Could Fred and George be anything more than responsible? Could Potter have wisdom in him? The questions were running through his mind as he walked alongside her.

Once inside the castle, she left him without a word. Cedric decided to give people a second chance.

May be if _he_ had been given a second chance, he could have been a different person.

But he wasn't. And when Pansy heard of the news of Diggory's death, she understood why she had needed to take him there. One last time. Before he was detached from this world forever. In a more permanent manner than she was.

By Death.

A/n: I've never written Cedric or Pansy or Cedric/Pansy before! So, tell me what you think I could do better! Review!


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